The Indian elections proved doubters wrong over the subcontinent's vibrant democracy

The election results of the Lok Sabha (lower house of Indian parliament), announced on June 4, gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s led alliance, National Democratic Alliance, a clear majority of 293 out of 543 seats, paving his way to become the prime minister for the third consecutive time. This itself is a historic feat since the first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru of Indian National Congress (INC), now the main Opposition party. However, the verdict has a caveat: it didn’t give Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the majority it gave in the last two elections of 2014 and 2019. His party BJP secured 240 seats — 32 seats less than the required majority in the Lok Sabha. As a result, Modi is now dependent on his allies — like the Janata Dal (United) and Telugu Desam Party — in his third term.

The West has welcomed this verdict terming it as a victory of democracy. Absolutely, this verdict only strengthens Indian democracy — but why only select this verdict? When the country’s voters gave Modi’s party its first electoral majority in 2014 or for the second time in 2019, where Modi’s party itself got 303 seats, the verdict was democratic only. In fact, every verdict since the first general elections of 1951-52 has only strengthened the democracy of this South Asian country, surrounded by neighbours, with some of them having cases of democratic governments being toppled by the military multiple times.

However, the problem with many in the West is that they refuse to accept the fact that the democracy in India over its seven-decade journey has only strengthened. They like to over-criticise India only to portray a distorted view that “India’s democracy isn’t working fine; it's only weakening.” There is nothing wrong in criticising an elected government but there is a clear difference between criticising and only focusing on negative stories. There have been Opposition-led governments in some of the crucial states — if Modi is an autocrat, how could have been that possible?

Notably, while Modi ruled at the Centre with an absolute majority, there have been states — like Maharashtra, the second-most populous state — where his party is ruling with the help of its junior partners — and in some cases — like Bihar, another crucial state — his party was the junior partner, now a senior partner, in the government.

There has been an attempt to exaggerate the centuries-old religious conflicts in the last ten years. Hindu-Muslim tensions are not new. The country had many Hindu-Muslim riots during the reign of Congress, which is termed as a "secular party" by intellectuals of the country. An analysis of the data of the National Crime Records Bureau from 1970 and 2021, showed that the 2021 has been the most peaceful in the last 50 years with violence peaking during the 1980s and then registering a deep decline. The violence-related incidents show a marginal rise again during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government and again seeing a dip during Modi's government till 2021.

Having said that, it is also a fact that poor Muslims have also been the beneficiaries of the various welfare schemes run by the Modi government like providing pucca houses, clean water, opening of bank accounts and providing free medical check-up up to Rs 5 lakh (around 4716 in pounds). However, it’s also a fact that the BJP didn’t have any Muslim representative in the lower house. But here the blame can’t be put only on the BJP as even if it gives tickets to Muslim candidates, they don’t get enough votes from their own community. While Western media tries to highlight how there is no Muslim representative in the lower house from the BJP, they also forget to highlight how the secular parties don’t give proper representation to lower-caste Muslims while giving tickets to mostly upper-caste Muslims, who are elected to the lower house of Indian parliament. Fact is at least a section of Muslims get represented in the parliament.

But there are many ethnic and linguistic minorities who mostly don’t have representatives from their communities in the parliament — both in the Lok Sabha (lower house) and Rajya Sabha (upper house) — and also in the various state assemblies. I come from an ethnic and linguistic minority called Bishnupriya Manipuri, a community which never had any representation in the Indian parliament and currently has no representative at the state levels. However, some in the West aren’t interested in the stories of these minorities, who are minorities within minorities and hardly have representatives in the parliament as well as in the state assemblies to discuss their concerns.

Obviously, the ethnic violence in the northeastern state of Manipur last year has been a cause of serious concern with the actions of the Modi government not satisfying the levels required to bring the state into normalcy. Having said that, the Western narrative that Christians are being targeted in the horrific Manipur riots, where more than 200 people are killed and more than 60,000 people are displaced, is another example of distorting facts. This violence is a result of ethnic tribe conflict between Meiteis and Kuki-Zomis, who are Christians. While the majority of the Meiteis are followers of Hinduism, there are followers of Sanamahism, a local religion, Islam and Christianity among the Meiteis. The decades-old tensions resulted in this ethnic conflict between Meiteis and Kuki-Zomis, where Nagas, mostly Christians, are neutral in this conflict. In the violence, killed and displaced are from both ethnic communities. 

It is true that India's democracy isn’t perfect. However, despite its flaws, it has been working well for the last seven decades — barring a brief dark period of 2 years when democracy was suspended by the Congress government headed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru. The voters gave an absolute majority to many prime ministers, including Modi, and also humbled them with weaker mandates when they felt it necessary. This has been a part of the seven-decade-old journey of India's democracy.

Sagarneel Sinha is a political commentator and a columnist from India. His X handle is @SagarneelSinha.